Pop … for absolute beginners
What comes to mind when you think of pop? Larger-than-life superstars, crowds of screaming, ecstatic teenagers, or simply what is playing when you turn on the radio? All of this is part of what pop has become over the past 100 years. Where does this enthusiasm come from, the enthusiasm that fills stadiums and has led entire generations of young people to pick up guitars or turntables and dress in miniskirts, bell-bottoms, or shoulder pads? “In musicology, we understand popular music as a kind of medium that mediates between the social and the individual level. Basically, pop is a way for individuals to make sense of sociocultural realities – by adopting the sounds, fashion, and lifestyles conveyed by this music and relating to them, in other words: by becoming fans,” says Raphael Börger, who taught a course on “Introduction to Popular Music Studies” during the 2025–26 winter semester. Pop is thus more than sound, more than just music in a narrow sense; it is always also an attitude toward life, a style of dress, and an offer for the senses.
… for the advanced
And how do you study pop? Musicology employs various approaches, depending on which dimension of the phenomenon researchers wish to focus on. In addition to the musical analysis of pop songs, the phenomenon can be approached from a historical, cultural, or sociological perspective. Or from an educational perspective. “Music education opened up to popular music early on because students confronted their teachers with this music, and educators had an interest in responding to it.” The topic was also of interest to ethnologists, for example Paul Willis, who conducted field research in the 1960s by living with hippies and motorcycle gangs. That, too, was pop research: “If you want to explore popular music forms in their entirety, a different approach is needed depending on the subject. Some look at the studio technology that makes the sound of pop possible in the first place, while others ride along on the back of a motorcycle to explore pop,” Börger explains. In the course, students were allowed to choose a hit song and apply specific theoretical approaches to it: Did The White Stripes engage in cultural appropriation? What can we learn from Taylor Swift about intermediality and gender? Or from Bulgarian rock music of the 1970s about life during the Cold War?
… for connoisseurs
“Through research on pop music, we basically learn more about the world and humankind. In the GDR, for example, Peter Wicke’s chair was one of the first research institutions for popular music worldwide. Thus, the history of a discipline can simultaneously tell the story of a divided Germany,” Börger says. And through the devices we use to listen to music, we can learn about the history of new technologies and how they were adopted. “There’s a theory that music played a key role in making the iPhone attractive. It was marketed as a device that let you use the popular iTunes player on the go. That’s how they used the familiar to create acceptance for the new,” Börger explains. The fact that pop is capable of this is also because it is a genre that constantly strives to reach as many people as possible. “Record labels invest a lot of money in their stars and develop sophisticated marketing strategies. This includes lyrics that are intended to appeal to as many people as possible and therefore tend to remain rather vague. And they are almost always about love. So pop has a claim to universality,” Börger says. Subcultures, on the other hand, challenge this claim. “You can look at the various subcultures and ask yourself what was mainstream during their time. Punk, hip-hop, or rave were always also a reaction to this universalism. A critique of pop through pop.”
This article appeared in the university magazine Portal - Eins 2026 „Inklusion“.